Activists Push Changes in U.S. Cuba Policy

One month after President Barack Obama announced the relaxation of regulations governing travel and remittances to Cuba, activists were pushing to lift travel bans on all U.S. citizens. Members of Congress, representatives of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and Human Rights Watch called for an end to the ban on U.S. travel to Cuba and encouraged the Obama administration to take other steps to open “person to person” dialogues. “The more we change, the more Cuba will change,” said Representative James McGovern, Democrat of Massachusetts, one of 154 co-sponsors of the Freedom to Travel to Cuba bill, introduced in February. Twenty-six senators are co-sponsors of the Senate version of the bill. Andrew Small, an Oblate priest who is a U.S.C.C.B. foreign policy adviser, said the U.S. bishops are fully behind both bills. “We need not just incremental change but robust, bold change,” he said.